


Hurt

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3557390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tripping back A/U in Season 2 - Episode 9. Sarah doesn't drop Holder off at his place that night, nor does she sleep in her car...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurt

Linden doesn’t know if she feels responsible for him, or just possessive of him. But what she does know is that she will not be letting her partner out of her sight tonight.  She understands enough about his injuries to know that somebody should be keeping him company. And if she’s honest, she doesn’t think she can stand to be alone either.

 

It stung, this morning, forever ago, getting kicked out of the hospital without being able to see him.

 

She can’t blame the sister, she’s just another woman spread too thin and trying to do her best.  At least she passed along that matchbook, had the decency to comply with her brother’s request even if she didn’t want to. Linden suspects Liz would want to throttle her now as well, for having Holder running around tonight with her, searching, trying, after he’d been good enough to sign himself out of the hospital to stand beside her while she watched her son disappear into the sky.

 

She knew he understood that running around and searching were the only things she could do right now, and she knew he wouldn’t bail on her no matter how bad he felt. But he was pale and quiet, obviously in pain, and they’d run out of options, for now.

 

Even she knew it was time to call it a night.

 

He didn’t react much when she drove by the turnoff to his place, and told him she thought he should spend the night at the hotel. At her place, she’d called it, although she shouldn’t even call it that, really, she doesn’t have a place. He had just nodded his consent, too sick to come up with jokes or innuendo, resting his head listlessly against the car window as she drove.  The only words he spoke were a request that they stop for food, he’d told her he’d not eaten at the hospital.  She doesn’t remember the last time she ate anything, and her stomach hurts, so she knows she must be hungry as well.

 

“They said I could have broth tonight if I played my cards right,” Holder tells her now, as he lowers himself slowly onto Jack’s bed, or rather, onto the bed that used to be Jack’s, “That was enough to get me outta there, just by itself.”

 

He looks up at her and tries a smile, and the low lamplight shows up the bruises on his face, and how blood has soaked through the bandage on his temple.

 

Linden opens the bag and puts their dinner on the bedside table between them. She watches him as he eats, like a wolf, burgers with some of the fries tucked inside them, then the rest of the fries, with mayo and ketchup, and finally downing most of his shake in one go. He takes the lid off, drinks it right out of the cup, can’t be bothered with the straw.

 

“Better?” she asks him as he stretches out then, draws a stuttering breath and winces.

 

“Yeah, oh yeah,” he tells her and turns his head towards her, “Almost human,” he grins at her, thankfully, starting to look like himself again.

 

But something’s not right.

 

“What the hell are you wearing?” she asks him, looking him up and down, after a minute.  She has eaten most of her food and has passed him her leftovers.

 

Holder looks down at himself. He’s wearing old-school Levis secured loosely by a frayed braided leather belt, a black zip-up hoodie and a t-shirt which bears the logo of some gym she has never heard of. All are shabby, faded, and too big for him.

 

“Hospital issue,” he tells her, “That nurse got these for me, from somewhere, my stuff was gone. I had to practically bribe him, he didn’t want me to leave.” Holder smirks now, winks at her, “I think he liked me, Linden.”

 

“The tense one with the Canadian accent?” Linden asks, “Yeah he did. He tried to run me off this morning.”

 

They both laugh now, and Holder sucks in a breath, grabs his side. For about one full second she’d half- forgotten what happened, to both of them. That they were hurt.

 

“Let me see,” she tells him now, motions to his torso, she’s gotten up from her bed to throw their garbage, “Let me see what they did to you.”

 

“Nah,” he grimaces, waves her off, “Nothing to see anyway, just an ugly-ass bunch of bruises.”

 

“No, c’mon, I want to see,” She wants to know how they hurt him, she’s not done being angry, not done with them period, not by a long shot.

 

“Holder I’m serious, let me see.” Linden tells him, and to reinforce her point she kneels up on the bed beside him.

 

Holder sits up with difficulty and unzips the hoodie. He doesn’t seem to know how to remove it so she helps him, and with the t-shirt too, sliding it up and off while he holds his arms up patiently. She’s well aware that she’s crossing a line but she doesn’t care, she wishes she’d crossed it already, before. Maybe they wouldn’t be here now, like this.

 

His upper body is covered in bruises, different shades of blue and purple, some are even black. For a second the shapes and colours blur before her eyes, merging into one big wound. The letters tattooed on his chest are in perfect contrast with the destruction, and yet they fit, in some perverse way. His body reminds her of a map, a relief map of violence and struggle.

 

She shakes her head, has to look away.

 

“Don’t sweat it, Linden,” Holder’s voice pulls her back, “I been beat up before.”

 

He motions to his chest, “Shit like this?  It goes away pretty fast.”

 

Linden nods. She doesn’t really believe him but she knows he believes himself. This all happened because she blew off his concern for her, and his attempt to help her son as well. How is it he doesn’t blame her. His obvious forgiveness both soothes and rattles her, more than she would like to admit.

 

She can’t speak, can’t manage it. Which is okay, because he’s still talking.

 

“But this stuff in here?” He touches her forehead lightly, “And here?” he puts two fingers onto her chest above her heart, “Not so much.”

 

Now she really cannot say anything, it’s all she can do to meet his eyes.

 

“Are _you_ okay?” he asks her bluntly.

 

“Yeah,” she answers quickly, automatically, before she has to look away again.  She looks up at the ceiling while her eyes fill up, then whispers, “No.”

 

 She stares up at the tiles, unblinking.  If she doesn’t move, the tears will reabsorb, she just has to wait.

 

 Holder waits with her, doesn’t say anything for a long minute.

 

“Look we can get him back in like, two minutes, Linden,” he finally says, and he only hesitates a second before he lays his hand, warm and heavy, on her knee, “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll help you. It’ll be a piece of cake, trust me.”

 

“Okay,” she croaks, but only so as not to disappoint him, and she nods, looks down at him through her tears, knowing now that they will spill, she is helpless to stop them.

 

Two fall almost simultaneously, one soaks silently into his bandages, the other lands on bare skin. They each reach a hand out to wipe it, hers gets there first, and she uses the edge of her sleeve, then her palm, to dry his skin. He flinches slightly when she reaches back to touch him a second time, and then a third. He is perfectly still as she runs the pads of her fingers gently over the bruises, just barely touching, running her hand from the edges of the bandages down to the odd belt he is wearing, across his belly, following the trail of destruction around and back up to where it disappears inside the flesh-coloured bandages on his right side. His skin is soaking up her touch, and she watches him, watching her. He closes his eyes for a second, and the small puff of a sigh that escapes his lips tells her in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want her to stop.

 

His breathing is shallow, careful, and from the state of his body she figures even that must hurt. By the time her hand finishes its second circuit over his ruined skin he’s still completely motionless, staring at her hand as it crosses his body again, then slides up over the bandages to his bicep.  There’s a black crescent-shaped bruise there, a heel print, it almost looks like, and she studies it carefully, imagining him crumpled in the dirt, with all of them standing over him, taking turns.

 

She lays her palm gently over the wound, as if to heal it, and imagines kissing it, imagines kissing _him_.

 

He beats her to it, sort of, he raises his arm, and lowers his head to press first his mouth and then his cheek to the back of her hand where it lays against him, holds it there for a long moment. When he lifts his eyes to meet hers she almost gasps at the intensity of what she sees on his face. It’s a storm gathering. Darkness. Hope. Pain. Desire.

 

“Thanks,” he says, his voice rough.

 

“For what?” she asks him hopelessly, “For sending you in there to get beaten half to death?”

 

“For finding me,” he shrugs, and winces, “for giving a shit about me.” He drops his eyes again to her hand which is still holding his injured arm, “For whatever this is.”

 

She nods a reply without looking at him, and then hazards a look up, catches his eye.

 

“I do,” she tells him, and moves her hand back to his stomach, where she rests it.

 

There’s action there, below the belt, she sees. She hopes he knows that she’s not going to stop touching him, not now. She wasn’t expecting it but she is stirred up too, suddenly.  She has quickly gotten used to the feel of his skin, and she’s close enough to smell his too-clean, hospital smell, bandages and antiseptic. He is warm, and she wants it, wants that heat, wants to touch him with both hands, and with more than just her hands.

 

She wonders how often in his life someone has touched him with care, with real affection.  Someone must have, at some point, she decides, because he can be gentle, himself, he knows how to care for others. He must have learned that somewhere. But from the way he is looking at her now, watching her as if he is afraid that she will stop, she decides it must have been a long time ago.

 

With a careful breath Holder lifts his other arm, the relatively uninjured one, and motions for her to sit down properly beside him.  Linden stands to remove her sweater, and her hair tie, and then settles in beside him.  His arm rests easily over her shoulders, and it’s a relief, to feel its weight. Despite his injuries he is as solid as ever, and she leans into him gratefully, if carefully, not wanting to hurt him.

 

Holder pushes back against the pillows piled up against the headboard, stretches his legs gingerly. The heat of his skin soaks through her t-shirt.

 

“See Linden?” he says, slowly, and she feels his mouth near the top of her head, “We ain’t doing so bad, are we?”

 

She shakes her head, moves closer to him again, “I guess not.”

 

“I mean, we got these five star accommodations here,” he kisses her now, in her hair, rubs his face there too and breathes her in. His voice is very quiet, and she is conscious of his chest rising and falling visibly. She breathes with him.

 

“We had us our gourmet room service entrees…” he continues.

 

“We did,” she agrees, looking down at him.

 

His belly is flat, almost concave, and in the space between the waistband of the too-large jeans and his body she can see that the hospital has not supplied him with underwear.  He’s fully hard, his cock reaching up towards his stomach and he makes no attempt to hide it, he is looking there, too. For a second she can’t move, pressing her thighs together, before she stands up on shaky legs. Her skin is aching. She has to get her clothes off.

 

It seems to take forever, to remove her t-shirt and bra, as well as jeans, tights, socks, underwear. Her mind is sharper than her hands, which are slow and clumsy, and by the time she finally gets to climb back onto the bed Holder has managed to get the borrowed jeans off and kicked them away.

 

She has to get up onto her knees to kiss him the way that she wants to. His mouth is soft and eager and tastes like his vanilla shake. For a minute she thinks he only wants to kiss, he puts all his energy into it, quickly driving all thought from her mind. She hadn’t known that she’d been waiting to feel his hands on her breasts until he puts them there, finally, and its then that she realizes that she has thought of this, of doing this with him, before now.

 

He curses under his breath when he touches her, when he feels how wet she is. She’s not sure if Holder’s just really really good at this stuff or if there’s something else at play but she knows she cannot tolerate any delay. He moans when she grasps him to get the angle right, breathes “Yeah,” and then “Fuck,” as she slips down onto him carefully, in slow motion. She watches his face as he stares at what is happening. He supports her weight with his hands so that she will not slide down too far, too fast, and her body adjusts quickly, she can’t help but tell him, that it is good, so good.

 

Holder lets his head fall back against the pillows and sets his eyes on hers.  He opens his mouth to speak and then seems to change his mind, and he grins at her for a second then and shakes his head, and bites his lip, just ends up saying her name.

 

He tries to move but can’t, much, she does it, and she rushes it, hurries both of them because she’s afraid it must be hurting him, causing more damage.  By the end though he is giving it back to her just as hard, and he comes as if thunder is rolling through his body, gasping, his face a mix of pleasure and pain.  She’s right behind him and it’s good, it’s from deep inside, where he is, she hears herself telling him, and feels his hands still grasping tight at her hips, she can feel him watching her, hears him trying to catch his breath.  

 

She lies still, tries to rest, concentrates on matching her breaths to his.  She’s pretty sure he’s asleep until she feels him shift a little, and then he’s starting it up again, slipping his hand between her thighs.

 

“Holder c’mon,” she closes her legs on his hand, “You have to sleep.”

 

“Eventually,” he agrees with her, nuzzling her hair again.

 

“Your boyfriend at the hospital told me I have to let you rest,” she tries to make it sound playful but she is serious, she doesn’t want to hurt him any more, and it’s late.

 

She’s starting to think about her son. Jack’s plane will have landed, he will be in his new home by now, with his new family.  She switches screens in her mind, over to tomorrow, and what they’re going to have to do to get their hands on their missing files.  The key, the key, the key. It’s there. They just have to find it. 

“Fine,” he tells her, teasingly, takes back his hand and places it innocently at her waist, “go all Boss Lady on me Linden, I don’t mind…”

 

She rolls over to face him, settles her head next to him on the pillow.

 

He is still again for a minute before his hand tenses where it rests on her.

 

“I just don’t want it to be over,” he tells her, and his voice is flat, his words hang in the air above her, begging for a reply that she can’t give. She can feel though that there is no expectation from him, and that’s precisely why she wishes it could be different.  He doesn’t say anything else, or move a muscle, but she imagines that she can feel him pulling away.

 

She could say to him that she loves him and she would not be lying.

 

She could promise him that this _is_ something.

 

She wishes that she could stay with this man, and absorb his strength, and give him what she has.  If she could see the way he sees, know the things he seems to know, she suspects that this could all make sense.

 

But she can’t promise anything, to anybody. She knows what happens when she does that.

 

“Shhh,” she tells him, soothingly, “Holder we’re here. Nobody can take this, alright?”

 

“Yeah,” he replies but there is hurt there, in his voice.

 

She shifts again, to get closer, and moves her hand up to rub his forehead lightly.

 

“Just don’t think too much, is all, okay?” she says gently, “Try to get some sleep. We have lots to do tomorrow. I need you.”

 

Holder nods his understanding, breathes deeply and carefully. She circles her fingers slowly on his skin, to give him something to focus on, and before long he is sleeping, she actually feels the moment when consciousness leaves him, and she sighs with relief.

 

It is a long time before she falls asleep. And then she dreams.

 

Of cars driving on wet roads, and of planes flying through sunsets. Of hallways and doors, and of trees and still water. Of dark, almond-shaped eyes, and of blood and dirt. It presses down on her, suffocates her with its weight. Her own ribs ache. She can’t breathe.

 

She understands on some level that she is dreaming, yet also knows that this is not a dream until she can wake from it.  She is terrified, hearing her partner’s cries, and she sprints on forest trails, searching, but she cannot find him. 

After a time she begins to wonder, if it’s his cries she hears, or her own.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to glowcult for the wonderful beta-read and the lovely insights...


End file.
